Modern cable service providers often employ a combination of optical fiber wiring, which extends through most of the network, and coaxial (“coax”) cable wiring, which extends from a central location near customers out to dwellings of the customers. The coax portion of such a network is often referred to as the “last mile.” Although extending fiber wiring all the way out to customer dwellings would be the best architecture in terms of data throughput (optical fiber provides a much higher throughput than coaxial cable), doing so is often considered cost prohibitive. One of challenges in the past few years for cable service providers has been pushing data speeds and bandwidth on the coax part of the network to be as close as possible to those on the on the fiber portion of the network.
Passive Optical Network (PON) technology is considered to be a promising solution for the “last mile” problem for home broadband access. In September 2009, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) approved the 10 gigabits per second (Gb/s) Ethernet PON (EPON) standard, which can deliver 10 Gb/s data in the downstream direction and 10 Gb/s or 1 Gb/s in the upstream direction. Since then, the deployment of the EPON devices has been gradually expanding, mainly in the area of new home/residence/commercial construction. However, in many of the areas where both residential and commercial buildings are established and equipped with coaxial networks, the cost of installation often prevents customers from upgrading to EPON technology. To address this challenge, various industry participants have developed the concept of an EPON Protocol over Coax (EPoC).